Volleyball reunion many years in making

Sid Feldman coached Jenny McDowell through drills for the first time over the summer of 1979 at a volleyball camp at Penn State.

McDowell, then in eighth grade, left the clinic with a little note on her evaluation form from Feldman, then the coach of an upstart volleyball team at the University of Georgia.

"You're going to be a Bulldog one day," Feldman penned.

More than 30 years later, the two will face each other as opposing coaches Friday.

"Yeah, it is pretty ironic, isn't it?" McDowell said.

McDowell, after fulfilling Feldman's words, became a legendary Bulldogs setter and is now in her 14th year as head coach at Emory.

She has taken the program to national prominence, including a Final Four appearance and 10 trips to the Sweet Sixteen.

Feldman, who coached Georgia to national esteem in the 1980s, is now the head man at Piedmont College.

After a remarkable, interconnected voyage to this point, Emory and Piedmont square off in the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament.

Following his first instruction with McDowell in the summer of '79, Feldman kept recruiting her through her high school career in Pittsburgh, Pa. By her senior year, McDowell was set for an official visit to the Southern school she knew little about.

The visit to Athens sealed her commitment.

"Any time you step foot on the University of Georgia, you know there is no greater place," McDowell said. "I was sold immediately. One of the things that excited me about the program at the time was it was fairly young in its development stages. I wanted to be part of making it a national contender."

And with Feldman and McDowell in the fold, the Georgia program did rise as a national contender.

The two would win back-to-back Southeastern Conference titles in 1984 and 85, and would advance to the Sweet Sixteen twice in the NCAA tournament.

Feldman credits much of the success to McDowell, whose No. 16 is the only retired Georgia volleyball jersey.

"She was a winner," Feldman said. "That's the one thing you can say about Jenny. She was a winner. One of our players said with Jenny, you just knew when the match was over, you were going to win it. She was a winner, and everybody on the court was confident with her that we were going to win it."

Feldman's last season coaching the Bulldogs, 1987, ironically, was McDowell's final year playing.

He stayed in the coaching ranks, running a club program out of Athens called the Georgia Juniors. Feldman's program fielded up to 11 teams at a time and consistently pumped out prospects to Division II colleges.

While Feldman was away from college coaching, McDowell was just beginning her career.

After serving as an assistant on the Georgia staff for nearly 10 years, she landed her first head coaching job at Emory in 1996.

Her coaching career has followed the same winning trend her playing days did. Since taking over at Emory, McDowell has compiled a .778 winning percentage.

"She has this winning, competitive personality," Feldman said. "It traveled over to her coaching, absolutely."

And of course, after accepting the head coaching job, McDowell leaned on a familiar voice to help perfect her coaching strategy.

"She really wanted my advice," Feldman said. "I sat down and watched one of her practices and took down seven pages of notes. She went through the notes and worked on them. The next year I went back to another practice and I took only one page of notes. ... she's done this herself, and the other thing is she gets a lot of top-notch recruits because the big thing in her recruiting is she is very, very honest. I've talked to her many times about her recruiting. She's very straightforward and honest. Her honesty is what convinces players to go to Emory."

So now the mentor and pupil, the coach and former player, will be on the same floor for the first time in 25 years.

The story has come full circle for a volleyball relationship that has seen nearly every angle possible. McDowell says Feldman is responsible for where she is today, dating back to that summer camp many years ago.

"I consider him a great mentor in life," she said. "He loves the University of Georgia as much as I do. We have so many great memories, and even over the past couple of years we've gone back and forth asking each other for advice. I really owe this career to Sid, because had he not recruited me to play at Georgia, my life would have gone in a totally different direction."

Now McDowell is in the position of power.

Her Emory Eagles are the No. 2 team in the nation and heavily favored over upstart Piedmont, making its second-ever tournament appearance. His school is blessed to have advanced to this point, Feldman said, after securing two upset victories en route to winning the Great South Atlantic Conference.

"I've gotten a lot of e-mails and phone calls," McDowell said. "My players hear me talk about Sid a lot, just the things I've learned from him. I think when you step on the court, for me, it's our next opponent in our run for another national championship. That's how I'll look at it."

Since his team is playing in an underdog role, Feldman has talked to his team about experiences he went through while Georgia was first breaking on to the national scene nearly three decades ago.

And of course, McDowell is a prominent character in his motivational stories.

Feldman plucked one match from his Georgia past, from 1985, to use to instruct his current players.

"We were supposed to get destroyed by UCLA in the second round of the NCAA tournament," he said. "We played them two-and-a-half hours and had a standing ovation from the Texas fans, who were playing after us, because everybody thought UCLA would knock us off in the 45 minutes or less. ... People couldn't believe it. We were just putting on a show, and Jenny was setting everywhere. It was some night, some proud night.

"That's what I basically told my team. If we get beat, that's OK, as long as we play with pride, competitiveness. You just don't want to go in and roll over and let the No. 2 team in the country have a cakewalk."

No matter who wins this weekend, both Feldman and McDowell admit, the match offers a unique opportunity to view a relationship only college athletics can provide.

This version of the feel-good story is more than 30 years, and three teams, in the making.

"The deal is, Jenny and I are probably going to hug before the match," Feldman said. "Once the match starts, we're both coaches concentrating on strategy and cheering on our players. And the once the match is over, I can tell you tears are going to roll again. It will be a roller coaster of emotion, that's for sure."